So we're working on a game we've been thinking about for a long time called Demon Dater. @ClarkJewett has been working on the music for awhile, before we stopped work on the first version of it. I fucking love the sound of it.

I asked @ClarkJewett to write his thoughts about Demon Dater Demo so that I or we could formulate an interesting blog post about them. But his loose thoughts on it are just, great, so here they are:

When I was working on demon dater I was inspired pretty heavily by Shoji Meguro and Shu Takumi. Demon Dater in my mind has always been about bold characters. Each demon you meet is strongly attached to certain character traits, not unlike the way Takumi writes his characters in Ace Attorney and Ghost Trick. Shoji Meguro writes the music for Shin Megami Tensei, which is a series about summoning demons in a cyberpunk future (usually). Basically, I asked myself “What if Shu Takumi made a visual novel set in Tokyo Millennium”

Once I was several songs in, the soundtrack also started to take form in an interesting way in my mind. It started to feel like a musical. While I didn't explicitly ever right them down a lot of the songs have “lyrics” that reflect what is supposed to be happening in the plot. I leaned into this concept and when I started writing a song I asked myself “If this was a play, who would sing this song? What would they be saying?”

A minor touch that also started as an unconscious germ was the fact that the music that has to do with power structures (Cor Novum and LAW) are very classically composed. If you stripped away all the electronic components and played them on piano or arranged them for a classical ensemble they'd sound pretty at home. To a lesser extent, Theres also something very square about the rhythm section (when I say square I mean theres an evenness to the drums/bass/rhythm guitar) in these as well as Righteous Pursuit. Even though the melody has a very languid meter in that song, the guitars and drums are very steady. Contrast with Blood on the Rocks which is supposed to be a place curated for demons which has a more breathing rhythmic structure. -@ClarkJewett

Isn't that fucking good? I know little about music but I love reading Clark's thoughts on it. Goddamn. -@jrdptttt

Here at PNTGRM we've been hard at work formulating our 2016 GOTY list, "The GOTY's." We have used objectivity and ethics to ascertain the true GOTY, and the 6 games which, while also good, are subordinate and inferior to the one true GOTY.

This list is not ordered in any meaningful way save for the final entry, the number one, that blessed game that somehow edged out every other game and, truly, becameGOTY.

Hylics

This game was built in RPG Maker, which means the majority of the gameplay is a turn based slugfest. This simply won’t do for our list, unless it’s a slugfest that takes place in a setting that can be described as “The Neverhood, but on even more drugs”. The combination of noise rock, partially randomly generated dialogue, and highly digitized claymation style makes this game a headfirst dive into the truly surreal. Also I love that when you die instead of kicking you back out to the title it sends you to heaven, which is just so chill. -@ClarkJewett

Hyper Light Drifter

This game is a place, a place that I love going to. It uses a sense of pacing expertly to make you feel what’s happening - The languid exploration, the intense, staccato fights. Hyper Light Drifter is just so thoughtfully put together, it’s incredible how well everything works. The melancholy, triumphant tone! The way the background art leads you to secrets, forcing you to pay attention! Plus, it got fucking robbed in other lists this year. It’s a game I’m going to come back to for a long time, like a Ghibli movie or something. -@jrdptttt

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

A few days after completing this game, I realized that the new Phoenix Wright was actually really well written. It turns out that you can have a cast full of colorful and outlandish characters and still write a meaningful story with subtlety. Spirit of Justice focuses primarily around Phoenix’s protege, Apollo Justice as he grapples with his own identity and his relationship with his biological father, his adopted father, and his lawyer-dad. What makes this great is that each case also deals with this theme of identity and reflects the struggles Apollo faces, but it’s very slick about only kind of letting you in on its secret. Then a bumbling paratrooper gets chased up a tree by a puppy and makes a Metalocaplypse reference. -@ClarkJewett

Firewatch

I love the way that this game teases out its central tension and conflict, suggesting that what’s happening is big, dramatic, blockbuster-thriller-like in scope, but then revealing itself to be much more low-key and character-focused. Firewatch is able to deeply communicate its characters and themes to you in such a way where you don’t even really realize it’s happening, and you come out of it wondering how exactly you know Henry and Delilah so well. -@jrdptttt

Hitman

(a.k.a. How to Get Away with Murder with a Fire Extinguisher)

Hitman is pure joy. Every time I lose a round and fail to hit man I’m always smiling if not outright cackling. Hitman is a game about becoming familiar with blueprints both spacial and temporal. It’s not a game that you're supposed to win on the first playthrough. This would be frustrating if it weren’t for the fact the game is practically on its knees begging you to run around and just clown on the NPCs. There’s so much to discover and the way you go about this is so rife with physical comedy it’s hard to put this game down. -@ClarkJewett

Overwatch

It’s really good. It’s got good characters who I like, and it’s good. It’s fun to play the game and when you play it, you feel good. It’s good when you win and less good when you lose (But still good!).

It’s just really, very good.

If you like to play good games that make you feel good then play Overwatch. -@jrdptttt

AND NOW... "THE GOTY's" 2016 GOTY:

The... The Senpai?!

I’m truly, truly flattered to announce to you, here, that The Senpai is PNTGRM’s official Game of the Year.

Why is the The Senpai PNTGRM’s GOTY? Let me count the ways:

The jokes

The goofs

The gags

And so much more

It’s hard at the top. PNTGRM knows this, and we believe it. But PNTGRM has proved themselves to ourselves, and we know, in our hearts, that we deserve this coveted GOTY.